GPUs

It’s about convenience when it comes to single board computers. The trade-off of raw compute power for size means the bulk of them end up being ARM based, but there are a few exceptions like the x86 based Udoo Ultra. The embedded Intel 405 GPU on the Udoo Ultra is better than most in the category, but that won’t begin to play much of anything outside of a browser window. Not satisfied with “standard” [Matteo] put together his build combining an Udoo x86 Ultra with a NVIDIA 1060 GPU. It seems ridiculous to have an expansion card almost three times longer than the entire computer its attached to, but since when did being ridiculous stop anyone in the pursuit of a few more polygons?

M.2 to PCIe adapter board (Top) Trimmed adapter board (Bottom)

Since the Udoo Ultra doesn’t feature a PCIe slot [Matteo] slotted in a M.2 to PCIe adapter board. There are two PCIe lines accessible by the Udoo Ultra’s M.2 port although trimming the adapter board was required in order to fit. The PCIe female slot was cut open to allow the 1060 GPU to slide in. All of the throughput of the 1060 GPU wouldn’t be utilized given the Udoo Ultra’s limitations anyway.

Windows 10 was the OS chosen for the machine so that all those NVIDIA drivers could be installed, and there’s also the added benefit of being able to sneak in a little Trackmania Turbo too. So to accompany the build, [Matteo] created a graphics comparison video to show the remarkable improvement over the embedded graphics chip. You can see the Time Spy benchmark results in the video below.

Are you a student? Are you part of a hackerspace? We have a contest going on right now where you can win a fancy new Prusa i3 MK3. The Repairs You Can Print contest is a challenge to do something useful with that machine that spits out tugboats. We’re looking for functional repairs of items around your house, office, or garage. Did you repair something with a 3D printer? Then you too can get in on the action! Enter now! Check out the entries!

You may know Flite Test as the group who do everything surrounding remote control flight (mostly fixed wings, a nice counter to the quadification of the hobby over the last few years). Flite Test designs and sells airplanes made out of Dollar Tree foam board, they have yearly, bi-coastal meetups, and they’re all-around awesome dudes. Now, they want to build the Disneyland of RC flight. [Josh Bixler], the face of Flite Test and a guy who has a plane named after him, wants to buy a golf course and turn it into the world’s best RC flying park, with a ~2000 foot grass strip for general aviation. We’re looking at their crowdfunding campaign, and it looks promising it might be funded by the time this goes live.

A while ago, [Peter Jansen], the guy who built a tricorder and a laser-cut CT scanner, made a magnetic camera. This Hall Effect camera is a camera for magnetism instead of light. Now, this camera has been fully built and vastly improved. He’s capturing ‘frames’ of magnetism in a spinning fan at 2000 Hz (or FPS, terminology kind of breaks down here), and it’s beautiful.

In the last few years, CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, has expanded. Originally, this was one of the treaties that banned the import or export of rhino horn, but recently this expanded to the export of rosewood thanks to increased demand in China for rosewood furniture. The laws of unintended consequences kicked into effect, and importing anything made out of rosewood is now a mess of permits and inspections at the border, including musical instruments. Travelling orchestras, for example, are at risk of having their string section confiscated because of rosewood tuning pegs. Cooler minds may now be prevailing, and there’s some hope the regulations may be changed during the next meeting of the CITES convention next year.

Need some EMC testing? [Zach]’s got your back. He’s reserved some time in a 10m EMC chamber for testing NeuroBytes this week. If you have an Open Source project that needs a pre-test scan for unintentional radiator, you can get in on the action. This is just a pre-test, you’re not getting certification, and you’re not going to test anything with radios, and you need to ship [Zach] your stuff. But still, free test time. Woo.